


Try a little

by ledbythreads



Category: Led Zeppelin, Page and Plant - Fandom
Genre: 1995, Addiction, Angst and Romance, Canon Compliant, Canon Timeline, Codependency, Established Relationship, M/M, My Favourite Husbands, True Love, back together and trying to live the best they can, disaster!Jimmy, lots of uncomfortable subject all Zeppelin canon, no archive warnings, on tour, post Zeppelin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29788917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ledbythreads/pseuds/ledbythreads
Summary: "Robert supposes if Jimmy had been locked in the loo overdosing, or banging a groupie, then the ancient Page enchantment of Teflon moral indifference would have prevailed. But no, he had to transgress an ordinance of the shiny new nineties"May 1995. They are back together with each other but Jimmy is sometimes in bits. Robert is always there to put him back together, but sometimes Jimmy would rather he didn't.
Relationships: Jimmy Page/Robert Plant
Comments: 24
Kudos: 22





	Try a little

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thebookhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookhunter/gifts).



Otis is singing. Nothing else matters except Otis and Jimmy in his arms.

On the floor of some dark hotel bathroom the May sunlight still manages to seep under the door like it's looking for them.

Still blessed. 

He's quieter now. Eyes closed. Frizzy hair plastered to his face on the one side, it springs under Robert's fingers on the other.

Like Jimmy it is more brittle these days. A simulacrum of. Robert stops the thought and swallows it. That's unfair. 

_'For things that he’ll never, never, never, never possess, yeah yeah_

_But while he’s there waiting, without them...'_

But he does.

He does have them, him, for moments at least.

Futile though it is.

Robert rubs a hand down over Jimmy's shoulder and along his back. Repeating the movement in waves. Jimmy shifts against him slightly each time, face in the crook of Robert’s neck.

"Hey. Hey. Do you want a drink?"

He realises what he's said as Jimmy groans, pulls both hands up over his face again and starts rocking slightly.

"No. I mean. Some water eh. Very fashionable these days, water. Or tea love? Portland will have decent tea, it's that kind of city. Let me get you something, eh?"

"No thank you, Robert" Jimmy says from inside his hands.

Robert needs to pee, and his leg is cramping. Otis has stopped singing. That fade out on the track, as always, unsatisfying.

Peeing in front of Jimmy right now seems undiplomatic. Unhelpful to remind him he's on the bathroom floor when they could be anywhere. No work tonight. No rush. 

"I love that song."

"He did not wish to have it released Robert, and yet his ability to inhabit the lyric with authentic vulnerability is an undeniable reason for its success. He shares with you, that beauty of the raw edge. The juxtaposition of the delivery and the lyric is inspired, almost as though the tenderness he is so fervently advocating is more of a visceral cry for radical social change than merely addressing a young girl's privations."

Jimmy is still behind his hands.

"I think it's about the virtue of kindness even when it can't change anything."

"I know, baby. I know."

_Baby._

Hope.

“Let me take you to bed. Pagey?”

“I’m quite alright here.”

“I need to pee.”

“I see.”

Robert leans down and kisses the part of Jimmy’s hairline that isn’t covered by his fingers. He can feel Jimmy tallying his options.

“I could just. You could just put me down here.”

“I could”

“I feel better. Here.”

“Let me. You look so beautiful in white sheets.”

He feels him shiver. A stutter in his inbreath.

“Oh, not today, I think. I mean. No. Do I?”

He does. Always has. Even on bad days.

Robert pulls Jimmy’s hands down gently. He looks clammy and creased. Hot with worry and humiliation and not enough sleep. He looks old. Fragile. Beautiful.

“Yes. You do.”

Robert turns one of Jimmy’s palms open and kisses into it. Kisses his fingertips. Jimmy lets both hands fall away. Lets Robert stand him up. Jimmy creases over, as though from a blow, but then stands by himself. Eyes blind in remembering.

“It was so stupid. So stupid. They wouldn’t even arrest me. I tried. I can’t”

He starts to hold both arms up to hook them round Robert’s neck then catches himself. Flat palm alighting on Robert’s chest instead.

“I’m sorry, you mentioned you need to umm. I shall, yes. Be in the bedroom.”

He walks away with the stiffness of a sober alcoholic. Unconsciously afraid to fall when he might feel it. They caught him smoking on the plane. He’s still terrified of flying. Does it anyway, of course. When Jimmy first started smoking cigarettes for real, he was on a flight from Guadalupe. To spite the stewardesses he’d said, his usual politeness killed with adrenaline despite the smack. It was terror bringing out the pedant in him. Jimmy’s disbelief in smoking and no-smoking sections in what he said, horrified, was just a sealed tube of stale air. The Starship grounded the year before with engineering problems that would see her sold for scrap. Before they got the Chariot on contract. No horizontal take-off. No lying with his face stuck with sweat against Robert’s belly, eye to his navel, shaking as they rattled into the sky. Robert still gets hard sometimes on a steep ascent. His cock getting ready for Jimmy’s mouth as soon as he wanted something to suck on. Jimmy could hyperfocus in that ratty bedroom on every single nuance of what Robert was feeling, and then loop it back to him with his tongue. When they were younger and before too much coke killed it for them. When it was a novelty. Jimmy came sometimes just from giving him head. He’d come up grinning and shove Robert’s hand down the front of his jeans so he could feel it. Wet like a girl.

Robert goes to piss before he gets too hard to manage it. Tucking himself back in, he cups his balls and ponders how long it is ethical to wait before fucking him. Whether Jimmy is in a state to be able to say no. How Jimmy would much rather that, at times like these, he didn’t ask. Just take. How that used to bother him. Does it still bother him? When he’s this pliable. When Robert does want to hurt him a little, just to make him stay close and out of trouble. He used to be Jimmy’s puppy and now he is his guard dog. It is what it is. He washes his hands. Ok more than a little. He wants it more than a little.

No seductive trail of clothing. Jimmy is lying fully dressed flat on his face on his own side of the bed. One shoe off. He’s pulled the drapes across though. Robert has been looking forward to this – Jimmy arriving one day later from LA. A mid-morning flight so what could go wrong? Robert had been up early despite his usual night out with the band. Fresh orange juice and bacon on the terrace. Ocean cities make him feel hopeful. A good two hours on the tennis court. Jimmy despairs of Robert’s athletic pep more than he ever did when they were kids. He can’t rise above things as easily now Robert is his own man, and he takes Robert’s fitness kick as a personal affront to his enduring habit of bumbling through life like a bee that has fallen into a glass of absinthe. And now Robert has to scoop him out and dry his wings in the sunshine. Of course, in Portland he’d nearly get pinched for smoking fucking tobacco. Robert supposes if Jimmy had been locked in the loo overdosing, or banging a groupie, then the ancient Page enchantment of Teflon moral indifference would have prevailed. But no, he had to transgress an ordinance of the shiny new nineties where one is free to continue one’s drug habits in the pleasant enclaves of the well to do – as long as one does not inflict passive smoking on the other first-class passengers.

It was the nakedness of it that had sent Jimmy into this state. His awareness that the walls of his castle are paper thin. He’d been delivered to the back door of the hotel, like dirty laundry in reverse, and dumped into Robert’s arms like a foundling. The wrinkles in Jimmy’s sock make Robert feel a desperate kind of love. Jimmy’s vulnerability as aphrodisiac as it ever was. Fans think Jimmy is the dark lord and have no idea the fucked-up things Robert thinks about his lover. They think he is Woodstock to Jimmy’s Snoopy. They don’t know he has picked Jimmy up out of his own vomit, wiped him off, and laid him. They don’t know that Jimmy has sucked Robert off when he was too strung out to bear being touched in any way but with a rough fist in his hair. They don’t know Robert dreams of Jimmy crying, and after he wakes, stunned with emotion, he jerks off thinking about it.

“How are you feeling?”

“How? Isn’t it something to do with brain patterns and the endocrine system? I much prefer that to Freud. Perhaps I could take the back off my mind and rewire it like the Supro?”

“My technical boy.”

“What if I can’t play?”

“You can always play.”

“Not like I could.”

This doesn’t go anywhere except platitudes or lies. He plays like now. Not like he could. Sometimes better, richer, gentler. His Wonderful One. With his heart of glass and mended hands.

“Shove up, Jimmylove.”

“I’m on my side.”

“It’s my bed.”

“I’ll go then.”

Everything is the wrong thing. Jimmy is easier in a song, however lovelorn. It is easier to be desperately in love when he’s not actually here. When Jimmy struggles it is like Robert is in quicksand. He needs to be methodical and slow, but it terrifies him. He’s not sure if it is the thought of Jimmy drowning, or his sure knowledge that if it came to Jimmy or himself, he’d let him go under.

Nobody is going under. Not them. Not the band. Not the tour. Not over a petty thousand dollar fine and three paragraphs in a local paper. Not over booze, or tennis, or secrets, or how many suites they book. Not now he has him back home.

“No”

He says it softly, but he means it. He will keep him here if he has to. He will lock him up like Jimmy used to do with Lori. He will keep him in a tower and make him weave gold out of straw. He will wear their room key round his neck on stage where Jimmy can see it glinting on his chest as he sings to him. But room keys are plastic cards now and times have changed. Where else would Jimmy go?

They have chosen each other again.

“What do you need? Jimmy?”

He’s silent.

Robert puts a hand on the small of his back and feels Jimmy flinch and then accept it. The flinch goes straight to his crotch and he hates himself for about ten seconds before he slides his hand down over his ass and feels Jimmy’s breath shift. Jimmy needs a shrink, Jimmy needs a drink, he needs a Grammy, he needs wide eyed girls to listen to him talk about Stax records’ unique studio acoustics and Christina Rosetti’s symbolism. He needs Robert. Can’t keep away. 

“Want you. Missed you.”

 _I’ve been loving you too long to stop now_. Hand between his thighs now - all Robert has ever had to give him was his body. His touch and his song. His eternal fire for Jimmy proving to him nothing is ever truly lost. If he can make him come hard enough he will forget about his demons, and lie with his head on Robert’s chest listening to the ocean inside him.

Robert slips his hand deeper. Now in between the counterpane and Jimmy’s crotch, twisting against his balls with the inside of his bare right wrist. Cupping his cock. Jimmy lifts his hips and settles against Robert’s hand, letting his thighs spread wider. Robert can feel Jimmy soft in his hand like the chest of that fabled dove. As she’d settled in his palm Jimmy had forgotten everything and come across the stage to pet her. Jimmy’s fingers, brushing against Robert’s in a way that made him want to kneel in front of fifty thousand witnesses to suck them. In the too bright sunlight he had felt the crowd waiting for him to do it.

Now in shadow he wants Jimmy just the same way. Their miracle. Wants the dove to fly from his hand to herald the good news of their love. He wants the rain to come down. Lust to drum down on them. Rain on the roof of their jeep the day they stopped to fuck in a layby, after filming in Snowdonia. Jimmy’s body resonant like the bowl-back of his ovation twelve string. Curved laminates of Sitka spruce and birch, moaning under Robert’s touch. Slick with wanting, like wet black slate in Corris quarry. He feels Jimmy pressing down to meet him. Tendons in his thighs tensioned like carbon fibre, but he can’t feel the music in him, can’t feel their spark. Robert kneads Jimmy’s ass and pulls up his shirt tails. Massages the knots from his back, Robert’s bangles ringing together in little flat clacks. Jimmy grinds, hands reaching back to touch whatever parts of Robert he can. Robert rolls him onto his back, palming at his cock through his trousers and opening them with his other hand. He kisses and sucks down Jimmy’s belly, expecting him to rise by inches as he teases with each slide of his tongue. When he reaches the crease beneath his hip bone Jimmy’s cock is still hiding like an anemone as the last of the sea seeps out of its rockpool. 

Robert wants to howl with frustration – at his own impotence not Jimmy’s. He wants to grab him and shake him - for leaving no way to fix this broken mess of a day. Instead, Robert makes his hands loving and warm, he reaches up and strokes Jimmy’s hair gently away from his face.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Jimmy curls away from him. Trousers still hitched down below his hips, his naked ass like a dare. Robert wants to slap him till he’s gasping. He wants to hold him down and fuck him. He wants Jimmy to beg him not to stop.

“If you leave too many things unsaid, baby, there will be nothing left you want to say.”

“Strange advice coming from you, my love.”

“It’s true for _you_. It’s not true for me.”

“Ok. It matters.”

“Good boy.”

“Sod off.”

“Robert. You can produce your own records. You can run the tour and lead the band.”

Jimmy turns to face him. Eyes fierce at last.

“Baby, you can write me blatant love songs on every single one of your albums, but you’re afraid because I can’t get it up? Tell me. What. You. Want.”

“I want you to be fucking sorry…”

“But I’m not.”

Jimmy reaches for him then, and Robert slides down beside him and into his arms. Face rooting into Jimmy’s chest. Fingers splayed on the cool flesh of his bare ass. Hand on his heart. Shaking. 

“I want you to be there for me… I want to make you come.”

“Shush now, hey. S’ok. You’re still my boy. Robert, I’m not falling apart I’m just falling. I’m so tired, baby. So tired. Tell me a story.”

“What about?”

“About making me be sorry”.

Jimmy smiles then. His real smile.

“start with how you slapped my arse raw. About how much I deserved it. Start with how much it turned you on.”

Robert can feel it now. Something wild, raw. Something honest. Nothing ever truly lost. He rubs circles into Jimmy’s belly. Feels the heat between them.

“Once upon a time Jimmylove, there were two princes that shared one crown…”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on actual news reports of Jimmy Page, drunk, getting caught smoking on a commercial flight between gigs in LA and Portland, and trying to get himself arrested. I do not know if Robert was with him at the time or not. Thanks to Ms Faithful the bad librarian for sending me the clipping. 
> 
> The lyrics are Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness and Been Loving You Too Long. 
> 
> Also - look it has been a long pandemic year and honestly I have no idea what anyone thinks of my writing at this point because everyone is so weary. I'd love to hear from you if you feel up to it.  
> I'm therefore putting some commenting guidelines you are of course free to ignore. Thanks for reading whether you comment or not <3
> 
> I really really love this era of Jimmy and Robert's relationship - if you want more background ask me. 
> 
> Like this but too tired or shy to comment? - send me emoji.  
> English not your first language - that is true of half the Zep fandom and however you write is welcome :) 
> 
> If you comment I usually write back. If you don't want a reply just say so. If you want to chat more casually come DM or hop on a post on tumblr. I use the same username everywhere.


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